Abstract

The present study is part of a much larger study that examined the ethics of bribery and the ethics of tax evasion from a variety of perspectives. In this study, a survey was distributed to 64 students at a university in Mexico City. They were asked to place a number from 1 to 100 in the appropriate space to reflect their view on the seriousness of 75 acts, where 1 = not serious and 100 = extremely serious. The four bribery scenarios were ranked about in the middle. Paying a bribe when pressured to do so was significantly less serious than the other categories of bribery – offering to pay a bribe, accepting an unsolicited bribe, and soliciting a bribe. The other three categories of bribe were found to be equally serious (p > 0.05).